I Secret Shopped #988 and Three Cop Cars Showed Up Outside My House
Although it professes to divert calls away from carceral responses, #988 may actually be increasing involuntary interventions.
‘A Playground for Predators’: Diane Dimond on The Abuses of Guardianship
Our guest today is Diane Dimond, a longtime, award-winning investigative journalist specializing in crime and justice issues. As a freelance journalist, syndicated columnist, and...
The Challenge of Presenting Antidepressant Risks and Benefits
Two goals are in direct conflict for doctors when it comes to antidepressant prescriptions: fully informed consent versus maximizing placebo value.
These Teens Got Therapy. Then They Got Worse.
From The Atlantic: It feels like we should be able to just sit teens down and tell them how to be happier. But that doesn’t seem to work, and sometimes it even backfires.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Five)
Discussing how psychiatric drugs lead to a more chronic course for depression and psychosis.
A Secret War, Strange New Wounds, and Silence From the Pentagon
From The New York Times: Many U.S. troops who fired vast numbers of artillery rounds against the Islamic State developed mysterious, life-shattering mental and physical problems that have been all but ignored by the military.
Only One of Five Key Xanax Trials Deemed Positive by F.D.A.
The published literature is misleading, as the negative Xanax trials either went unpublished or were spun to appear positive.
Madness and Method: Exploring the Realm of Unconventional Reasoning
What if madness isn’t a defective form of reasoning, but a distinctive style of reasoning?
Personal Boundaries and Their Violations
From Dr. Gary Sharpe/Out-Thinking Parkinson's: How invasions of physical, mental, emotional, and energetic space damage boundaries and lead to psychological and physical health conditions.
Medication-free Ward in Tromsø, Norway May Soon Close
The Tromsø ward has shown that offering patients the option to forgo psychiatric medication, or to taper from the drugs, can be a successful model of care.
How Literature Teaches Compassion Over Condescension
From Psychology Today: Great works of literature remind us of the humanity of others by allowing us to imagine our way into their woundedness and hear their stories from within.
Most People Who’ve Used the 988 Crisis Line Say They Wouldn’t Turn to It...
From CNN: New research in JAMA Network Open found only a quarter of users said they'd be very likely turn to 988 in the future for themselves or a loved one.
Antidepressant Withdrawal: A Clinician’s Middle View
In the debate about antidepressant withdrawal, I present a middle ground, where the views of both sides are understood to have origins in wanting to help people.
The Superpowers of Sensitive People
From Greater Good Magazine: Sensitivity is the ability to "perceive, process, and respond deeply to one’s environment" and is exactly what our world desperately needs, argue the authors of a new book.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Four)
On the failures of the publicly funded long-term studies and psychiatry’s fraudulent reporting of these results.
Animal Study Shows Impact of Prozac in Pregnancy on the Child
Researchers found that rats born to mothers given the antidepressant Prozac during pregnancy or breastfeeding exhibited varied behavioral and developmental effects, with implications for the understanding of antidepressant impacts during human pregnancies.
The War on Suicide Is Making Things Worse
While allegedly intended to help, institutionalizing people against their will does more harm than good. Psychiatric coercion is dehumanizing.
Inside the Psychiatric Hospitals Where Foster Kids Are a “Gold Mine”
From Mother Jones: Scandal-plagued health care giant Universal Health Services (UHS) profits handsomely off the failing American child welfare system.
It’s Time to Consign the “Selfish Gene” to the History Books | Jeremy Lent
From Salon: The trouble with the 'selfish gene' story is not just that it is scientifically flawed; it's also that it presents such an impoverished view of life's dazzling magnificence.
May Cause Side Effects–Radical Acceptance and Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: An Interview with Brooke Siem
Brooke Siem discusses her experiences of being medicated with antidepressants as a teenager, her withdrawal from a cocktail of psychiatric drugs and her debut memoir, May Cause Side Effects.
Dostoevsky: A Psychologist We Can All Learn From
Psychology has greatly broadened its scope since Nietzsche’s day and yet his implied criticism is one the discipline is still wrestling with.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Three)
Psychiatry forcefully maintains its delusions, even when the most reliable science has shown that their beliefs are wrong.
The Troubled-Teen Industry Offers Trauma, Not Therapy
From The New York Times: Hundreds of thousands of young Americans have endured harms or assaults in residential boot camps, wilderness therapy and Christian and therapeutic boarding schools.
Why Failed Psychiatry Lives On: Its Industrial Complex, Politics, & Technology Worship
By embracing the widely popular technology-worship “religion,” psychiatry is permitted to ignore the reality that its repeated failures are evidence that its fundamental paradigm is misguided.
Psychiatric Patients Restrained at Sky-High Rates at This L.A. Hospital
From the L.A. Times: L.A. General’s Hawkins Mental Health Center has reported a restraint rate more than 50 times higher than the national average for inpatient psychiatric facilities.
